Cutting Back on My Social Scene and Focusing the Conversation

Early on in the social media play, getting more friends, more linked-in contacts, more twitter followers, more more more, was sort of the goal. Well, once you had them you had to figure out how to sort through the noise and tune into the conversations you actually cared about.

So a month ago I started a radical Facebook/LinkedIN/Twitter cut back. Here’s what I discovered.

Facebook was easy. Anyone I didn’t really care about their “status updates” was gone. If we weren’t friends in high school it isn’t likely that I we’re going to be buds on facebook. I might have friended a lot of folks leading up to the reunion, but I’m not really interested in learning about the kids of people who I didn’t really gel with in the first place, 20+ years ago. And all those people I added because they were friends of friends in the music business. I am probably not going to one of your gigs in Milwaukee, ever. And any one who I couldn’t remember having a conversation at all with. If their name didn’t immediately conjure up a face or a past conversation, well… they were gone.

LinkedIn was a bit harder. In your business social circle, the number of contacts you have says something about 1. how long you’ve been doing social media; 2. how many people trust you enough to LinkedIn with you; 3. how many people would recommend you for your past work.

But LinkedIn like any other network is getting clogged with spammers, scammers and recruiters who just want to add more reach to their LinedIN fishing net. And there’s the LION designation, which means, LinkedIN Open Networker, or people who’s mission is to build huge networks. I don’t know if it’s some form of network marketing, but I stay away from the LIONs.

And Twitter was the easiest. I use a tool called ManageFlitter (they had to change the name due to Twitter ™ issues). And using this tool I can quickly ID and unfollow people who aren’t following me back and people who are tweeting WAAAAYY TOO MUCH.

Again, I’m enjoying the reduced noise at the moment. But I’m also noticing that I am networking less over all. I am still rousable for a good discussion on Facebook, or a hot #hashtag. However, mostly I’m working to reduce the incoming broadcast network so that the information I am receiving is more about people and ideas that I care about, and less about marketing, networking and self-promotion.